


Power of Three

by youjik33



Category: Playing House (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-29 00:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5110577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youjik33/pseuds/youjik33
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie, Emma, and Zach break out the old Ouija board on Halloween night. It's just for fun, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Power of Three

**Author's Note:**

  * For [joycecarolnotes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/joycecarolnotes/gifts).



The sun had set, the candles had burned out of the jack-o-lanterns on the porch, and Emma, still in her witch hat and striped tights, sat shoulder to shoulder with Zach on the couch in the living room, showing him pictures on her phone.

"I realize as her uncle I might sound biased," he said, "but I swear, from a completely objective standpoint, Charlotte is the single cutest baby in existence."

"No, I think that sounds about right," Emma said, flipping to the next image. "Oh, here she is trying to eat the bell on her collar. We ended up just taking it off. Here's the one you took right before we left. We look great, don't we?"

In the picture Emma and Maggie wore matching witch hats, skirts, blouses. Charlotte, in a black hooded onesie with cat ears attached, stared at the camera from Maggie's arms, looking vaguely confused about her surroundings.

"We got a pretty good candy haul, too," Emma said, nodding toward the bags on the coffee table. "It turns out nobody really cares if you're an adult trick-or-treating if they're distracted by an adorable baby. You can have some if you want – as a thanks for staying here and passing out treats."

"Oh, it was no problem," Zach insisted. "Anyway, I snuck a few myself. And I liked having an excuse to dress up."

"Yeah, you know, you didn't have to be a witch too," Emma said, lowering her phone and wrinkling her forehead at Zach's black skirt.

"I wanted to. It's the power of three! Didn't you ever watch _Charmed_?"

"...I did not. Wait, _you_ watched _Charmed_?"

"Well, I started losing interest after they killed off Shannen Doherty."

"Okay, guys," Maggie interrupted, coming down the stairs. "Charlotte is sound asleep. What do you say we crack open that mulled wine and watch some horror movies?"

"Do we have to?" Emma asked. "The horror movie part, I mean, obviously I don't have any problem with the wine."

"I have a better idea," Zach said. "Check out what I found in the game closet." He leaned forward and pulled a box from under the coffee table.

"Oh my god, the Ouija board!" Maggie's voice rose in excitement. "We used to mess with that at slumber parties all the time, remember, Emma?"

"Halloween night, and the moon is out," Zach said. "It's not full, it's a waxing gibbous, but still. I thought it was the perfect time."

"Well, okay," Emma said, "As long as we're still having wine."

 

\-----

 

Half an hour later, with the wine poured and candles lit for atmosphere, they settled around the kitchen table, mostly because the moonlight was streaming through the window and making everything seem appropriately spooky and mystical. Even Emma, who of the three of them was the most skeptical about the supposed powers of anything mass-marketed by Hasbro, felt a thrill of excitement. They'd all put their witch hats back on, which might have contributed to the creepy mood.

"Ugh, Emma," Maggie said as they settled their hands on the planchette. "Did you really have to leave your creepy doll in here?"

"It's not creepy!" Emma insisted. "It was my grandma's, do you have any idea how much I had to beg my mother to let me have it?" The doll in question was antique porcelain, wearing a fluffy black dress, a shawl, and a pointed hat, with a broom affixed to one hand with a bit of string. Emma had always wanted it as a Halloween decoration.

"It's dead eyes," Zach said thoughtfully. "And the shawl. It reminds me of that mean neighbor lady when we were kids."

"Mrs. Faraday!" Maggie exclaimed. "I almost forgot about her. She died like twenty years ago. Was she actually mean or did we just make up stories about her because she looked like a witch and always stared at us from her porch while wearing a shawl?"

"Once she hit me in the face with a Frisbee I accidentally threw onto her lawn," Zach supplied. "I was six or seven. I got a black eye, but I told Mom and Dad I fell out of a tree because I was afraid if I told the truth Mrs. Faraday would put a curse on me."

"Wait. What? Seriously?" Emma said. "I'll put the doll away tomorrow, since Halloween is over anyway, and you apparently have some lingering Mrs. Faraday-induced PTSD or something. But I still think it's cute."

"Now, should we ask it something?" Maggie said. But before they had a chance to think of anything, the planchette moved swiftly to the word YES.

"Oh, ha, ha." Emma rolled her eyes. "Which of you did that?"

"Not me!" Maggie insisted. "Maybe it was a _spiiiiiriiiiiiiiit_." She drew out the word in her best spooky voice.

"Are you a spirit?" Zach asked, ignoring them. The planchette moved to the right an inch, then back to the YES.

"What's your name?" Maggie asked, excited. They all leaned in to get a better look at the letters spelled out in the moonlight. F A R A D-

"Faraday?" Zach blurted, and once again, the planchette moved to YES.

"Ooooh, spooky," Emma said. "What a coincidence. The ghost of the mean dead lady you were just talking about just happens to be in the Ouija board. And introduces herself by her last name for some reason."

The planchette was moving again, and they watched silently as it spelled out a sentence, one letter at a time: MY NAME IS WILMA

"...was her name Wilma?" Zach asked.

"I don't remember," Maggie said with a frown. "Do you think it's really a ghost?"

YES, the board said again.

"Agh, that really is creepy. Maybe we should stop," Emma said.

"It's probably not a ghost," Zach said. "Scientists have pretty conclusively proven that the planchette is moved subconsciously by the people using it. It's called the ideomotor effect."

"What's with the 'probably'?" Emma asked. She felt a little silly about the skin-crawly feeling she was getting, and took a large gulp of wine.

"Well, it _is_ Halloween."

Later, when they'd finally worked up the nerve to talk about it, they would all remember that precise moment the moonlight seemed to become a tangible thing, milky liquid silver pouring from the window across the Ouija board and landing on the doll's painted porcelain face, and the gust of wind that made the candles flare up for an instant, even though the windows were closed.

They all dropped their hands from the planchette. Emma's elbow bumped Zach's wine glass, and it rolled across the kitchen floor as they all stared white-faced across the table at each other, trying to figure out what had just happened. The mysterious wind had vanished as quickly as it had arrived, and the only noise was the tick-tick-tick of the clock in the hall.

Then came a rustling sound. Soft, at first, but followed by a rattle.

"Are you two seeing that?" Zach murmured.

Emma just nodded, throat dry, trying to come up with some logical, non-ghost-related reason why her grandma's porcelain doll would be rocking back and forth on its own. An earthquake, maybe. In Connecticut. A very localized earthquake, since nothing else in the kitchen was rattling even a little.

The doll was rocking more and more quickly. It teetered on the edge of the kitchen island for a second, and then tipped, sending the whole thing crashing to the floor. Emma screamed. So did Zach, a high-pitched yelp that Emma would have teased him about, in different circumstances.

But Maggie, stone-faced and determined, bolted from her chair, threw open the cupboard, grabbed the salt shaker, and immediately started dumping salt on the floor.

"What are you doing?" Emma squeaked once she'd found her voice.

"I'm surrounding it in a circle of salt! Don't you remember _Hocus Pocus_?"

"Oh, right," Zach said, as though any of that actually made any sense. "We never got around to watching it this year."

The three of them crowded around the doll, which still lay motionless on the floor. Clearly, Emma thought, they were being ridiculous. The house had just been settling, and the doll had fallen from the counter, and the whole Halloween-night Ouija board thing had gotten them all panicking, and they would be laughing about this before long.

The doll's head turned, its painted eyes staring up at them, and all three of them screamed again. As they watched, clinging to one another's arms, it rolled over, pushed itself up on its stiff arms, and stood upright.

"Oh my God," Emma was saying. "Oh my God, oh my God. Zach, what the hell are you doing?"

Zach had pulled his phone out of the pocket of his witch skirt. "I'm taking a video," he said. "Nobody is going to believe this otherwise."

"Nobody is going to believe this, period," Maggie said. "Oh, hey, the salt worked, though."

The doll, wobbly as it was without bendable knees, had shuffled to the edge of the circle, but seemed unwilling or unable to pass through. As they watched, it turned, shuffled back the other way, and stopped again.

"That's good," Emma said uncertainly. "Right?"

"It certainly is," Zach breathed. "This footage is amazing."

Maggie smacked his arm. "How about you do something useful with that?"

"Like what?"

"Like Google how to get a mean old lady spirit out of a doll."

"Oh. Right, that's probably a good idea."

"You really think you're going to find that on the internet?" Emma asked.

"Emma, you can find anything on the internet," Zach said. A little too condescendingly, she thought, all things considered. "I bet there's a WikiHow on exorcism."

"Right," Maggie said, going into full-on take-charge mode. "Zach, you're on that. Emma, start looking through the herbs in the cupboard for anything that might be helpful, it's a mess in there. I'll be back in a minute."

Emma looked up from the still-shambling doll in surprise. "Where are you going?"

Maggie hoisted a cannister of Morton. "Just making sure my baby is safe."

 

 -----

 

Turning her back on the doll wasn't easy, though it got a little less terrifying once they'd turned the kitchen lights back on. Emma tried her best to ignore the sounds its little feet made against the tiled floor as she rifled through the cabinet.

"Okay, it sounds like for a lot of this, as long as we believe it'll work, then it should work," Zach said.

"Oh, that's incredibly comforting, Zach, thank you," Emma said. "So we just have to hope it gets out of here, and if we want it bad enough, it just happens?"

"Well, ritual should help. Do we have rosemary and thyme?"

"You want the parsley and sage, too, Mr. Garfunkel?" Emma asked, trying to force herself to laugh at her own lame joke. She found the corresponding bottles, though, and set them both on the kitchen island.

"Great! What else have we got?" Zach asked  
"Cayenne, chipotle powder, dried birdseye peppers... man, Maggie really likes spicy food."

"Any fennel?"

"Uh... fennel and anise are the same thing, right?"

Zach hesitated, looked at his phone screen again, and then said, "If we believe they are, that's probably all that matters."

"How's it coming?" Maggie asked as she returned to the kitchen.

"Great," Zach said. "Do you have any eucalyptus?"

"I do have eucalyptus!" Maggie said. "There's a lovely floral arrangement in the vase in the foyer." She handed Zach a stem a moment later.

The siblings' weirdly detatched sense of calm was catching, Emma realized. If all they needed to pull this off was force of will, they were going to be just fine.

"Now what?" Maggie asked as Zach poured a handful of all the herbs into a bowl.

"Well, now we need a ritual."

"Oooh, what was that thing they did in _Practical Magic,_ when Nicole Kidman got possessed by the hot doctor from _E.R._? They stood in a circle around her, cut their hands, and then held hands, and his spirit went flying out and turned to dust-"

"Wait a minute, Noah Wyle was in _Practical Magic_?" Emma interrupted.

"No, Goran Visnjic."

"Oh," Emma said. "Noah Wyle's hotter."

Zach snorted. "Hotter than Dr. Kovac? I don't think so."

"Come on, you two, this exorcism thing is more important than this stupid argument, especially since obviously Dr. Kovac is hotter than Dr. Carter, Emma, I think we need to do some rewatching soon. Anyway, I like the hand-cutting idea."

"Wait, why? Can't we just hold hands without hurting ourselves?"

Maggie was already pulling a knife out of the block on the counter, and Zach started pouring the mixture of herbs onto the doll's pointed hat. "To bind ourselves closer! Unite our wills! Just a little cut. It'll work, I'm sure of it," Maggie said, holding the knife out to Emma.

"Ow! Why did I take it blade-first?"

"Well, there. That wasn't so bad, was it?" Maggie took the knife back, slid the tip of the blade across her palms, handed it to Zach.

For a minute everything was going smoothly – until Zach, handing the knife back to Emma, slipped in the spilled wine. His foot slid forward, breaking the salt circle, and suddenly the kitchen was full of wind again.

The candles blew out, and the halogen bulbs in the ceiling cracked and went dark. A shriek joined the sound of the wind, grew into a high-pitched cackle.

It was coming from Zach, Emma realized, blood running cold. And it was definitely not his voice.

"You brats!" the voice wailed with Zach's mouth. "You think I don't know what you've done! All of you, you'll pay! Your children throwing footballs into my yard! Your dogs defecating on my grass!"

"You're dead!" Maggie shrieked back. Her hand tightened on Emma's, blood sticky between their palms. "You're dead and the nice family that lives in your house now cut down the ugly tree in your back yard and knocked down a wall in the dining room and turned your den into a breakfast nook!" Maggie still held Zach's hand tight, and looked at Emma, eyes flashing. "Emma, grab his other hand, now!"

Emma, heart pounding, only hesitated for a fraction of a second. Scared as she was, she thought of Zach, awkward and strange at the best of times and annoying and slightly creepy at the worst, and she thought of how much he loved Maggie and Charlotte and how much they loved him back, and she bit her lip and lunged for his arm.

_"Give me my brother back,"_ Maggie said, and in that moment Emma had no doubt that her will alone was strong enough to defeat anything.

There was a flash of light, and the three of them were thrown backwards. Emma hit the kitchen counter and sat dazed for a moment, but aside from her aching hands and a lingering pain where her back had hit the edge of the countertop, she was fine.

Maggie was crouched over Zach, stroking his hair. "You okay, Zoo?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said, shuddering. "I feel like a need a shower, though."

Emma, in the meantime, had dared to approach the doll, which was lying in front of the refrigerator. Its hat was crumpled and covered in the pungent remnants of the herbs, and there was a fracture running through its left eye; Emma felt a little pang of sorrow, but she had to admit to herself she probably didn't want to keep it around after this anyway.

"Did you see them too?" Zach asked softly.

"See what?" Maggie asked.

"Mom and Dad," Zach said. "I saw them. I think- they were trying to protect me. They were right in front of me, while Mrs.- while she was-" He shuddered again, and Maggie threw her arms around his shoulders. Emma left the doll and dropped to her knees next to them, joining them in a group hug.

A cry from upstairs jolted them out of the moment. "Charlotte," Emma said, unnecessarily; Maggie was already on her feet. Zach and Emma followed close behind.

"Oh," Maggie said, kneeling over Charlotte's crib. "It's okay, guys, just a stinky diaper. Nothing supernatural about that."

"I got this one," Emma said, pulling a clean diaper out of the drawer in the changing table. "You two just relax."

"We've got a lot of cleaning to do," Zach said with a sigh. "There's salt everywhere."

"Happy Halloween," Maggie said, and then started giggling, a slightly hysterical giggle that she'd obviously been holding in for a while.

Zach hugged her again, and once Emma had gotten Charlotte clean and dry, she joined them, putting one arm around Maggie's shoulders and leaning against Zach, Charlotte tucked into the crook of her arm. "Happy first Halloween, Charlotte," she said. "We'll tell this story to you when you're older, even though you're not going to believe it."

Downstairs in the kitchen, the porcelain doll lay unmoving on the kitchen counter, and next door, oblivious, Mrs. Johnson added a splash of rum to her mug of hot apple cider, and sat down in the breakfast nook.

 


End file.
